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Engaging ‘Bad’ Millennial Moms

In the month since its release, US comedy film Bad Moms has grossed over $100m worldwide, a significant success considering its modest $20m budget. In analysing the movie’s popularity, Forbes points out that “Millennial motherhood is big business these days” – and Bad Moms speaks directly to a generation bored of traditional ‘cutesy mum’ marketing.

This is a growing and important demographic. In the US, 83% of new mums are millennials (IAB, 2015), and 70% of millennial mums consider themselves the primary decision maker in the family (Crowdtap, 2016).

While 57% of millennial mums think they’re doing a good job (Pew Research, 2016), they nonetheless want to be treated like real people with flaws and foibles (see Get Real). The Bad Moms film and marketing campaign reflected this: on Twitter, millennial mums were encouraged to retweet the film’s official account to receive videos featuring the cast offering quirky, off-colour parenting advice.

American beverage brand Honest Tea tapped into this same trend of imperfection for their recent Refreshingly Honest campaign. The brand partnered with mum blogger and Instagram influencer Jessica Shyba, who encouraged her 534,000 followers to “Share some of your #RefreshinglyHonest moments so we can all feel better about our less than perfect parenting moments.” Since May, the hashtag has been used almost 7,000 times across social platforms.